Remembering the Kennedys with a visit to Hyannis Port

Wednesday

Nov 20, 2013 at 11:38 AM

The compound, three white cottages with a sprawling lawn, was “sacred ground” to the Kennedy family. “I always come back to the Cape and walk on the beach when I have a tough decision to make,” JFK once said.

Linda Borg Journal Staff Writer @lborgprojocom

HYANNIS PORT, Mass. – The first snowfall of the season shrouds the Kennedy compound early this month, blurring the unadorned white clapboard cottages that face Nantucket Sound.

The causeway that connects Hyannis Port to Squaw Island is deserted. So is the slip of beach where President John F. Kennedy once strolled, the yacht club where his family sailed as are many of the shingle-style homes whose former Republican owners probably never voted for a Democrat, much less an Irish Catholic.

It’s been two generations since the nation was captivated by the images of Kennedy, tanned and smiling, stepping out of Marine One, where he was immediately swarmed by nieces and nephews.

It’s been two generations since Life and Look magazines snapped photos of the brothers, Jack, Bobby and Teddy, playing touch football on the lawn overlooking Lewis Bay.

And it’s been two generations since Americans were captivated by a beaming Jackie Kennedy in over-sized sunglasses and a simple pink shift, with her two children and dogs of every size and description.

The compound, three unassuming cottages with a sprawling lawn meant for young children, was “sacred ground” to the Kennedy family, according to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy.

“I always come back to the Cape and walk on the beach when I have a tough decision to make,” President Kennedy once said. “The Cape is the one place where I can think and be alone.”

Hyannis Port is where Caroline Kennedy celebrated her wedding, where the Kennedys retreated to mourn the death of John F. Kennedy Jr., killed in a plane crash off Martha’s Vineyard and where Sen. Edward Kennedy spent his final days before dying of brain cancer in 2009.

But the Kennedy legacy is very much alive a couple of miles away at the John F. Kennedy Museum in downtown Hyannis,

“a place where people tell their stories,” said John Allen, its new executive director.

“Instantly, they tell me where they were and who they were with the day JFK died,” he said. “Some come here to cry.”

The first family – youthful, handsome and athletic -- inspired hope in the country.

And Hyannis Port, home of the summer White House, was a key part of the burgeoning Kennedy mythology.

It was there that photographers captured the family sailing Kennedy’s catboat, the Victura, and those now iconic touch-football games.

“They lived a normal life here,” Allen said. “They went to the Captain’s Table for dinner and the Four Seas for ice cream. They bought their clothes on Main Street, Hyannis. You saw him at church.”

Gordon Caldwell, a photographer for the Cape Cod Times for 39 years, was one of two men assigned to cover Kennedy around the clock on his visits to the compound. Caldwell, now 93, remembers driving down back roads at 80 mph, trailing the Kennedy motorcade after it left Otis Air Force Base.

“One time, I was out by the entrance to the president’s house and this big fellow comes by,” he said. “A policeman, a young rookie, said, ‘Sir, you can’t go in there.’ The fellow turns to me and says, “Hey boy, tell him who I am.” I said, ‘It’s Lyndon Johnson.’ ”

The rookie officer apologized and let the vice-president into the compound.

While the arrival of the Kennedys to the summer White House was a Chamber of Commerce dream-come-true, their presence wasn’t always a hit with the Hyannis Port regulars, who had to contend with gawking tourists clogging the narrow streets and crowding to the tiny general store.

“The Hyannis Port crowd was Pittsburgh Republicans,” said David Crawford, who worked in Hyannis Port for Kennedy’s 1960 campaign and later was a personal aide to Joseph P. Kennedy. “They were invaded. They were not happy campers.”

Crawford recalls how Kennedy’s arrival would create a mob scene.

“The first thing you’d hear was the whoosh of the helicopter,” said Crawford, now 74 and living in Osterville. “People were out on the water. They were standing in widow’s walks and leaning out of second-story windows. It made no difference whether you were Democrat or Republican.”

After Kennedy landed on the front lawn of the big house, owned by Joseph P. Kennedy, his nieces and nephews would pile into a golf cart driven by the president and drive down the street for ice cream, candy and newspapers, trailed by a golf cart full of Secret Servicemen.

If the compound was the summer White House, then St. Francis Xavier Church on South Street in Hyannis was its spiritual home.

Monsignor Thomas J. Harrington was only 25 when he was assigned to the parish, his first one, in June 1964, less than nine months after JFK was assassinated.

Rose Kennedy’s daughters, Eunice, Jean, Pat and Kathleen, would make arrangements to visit the church after dark, when they would have privacy, Monsignor Harrington recalls. “We would open the church for Kennedy girls and they would recite the rosary all by themselves.”

The Kennedys were regulars at St. Francis. The late Robert F. Kennedy helped serve Mass and Sargent Shriver’s sons were altar boys. Rose Kennedy attended Mass every day and Monsignor Harrington would sometimes bring First Communion to Joseph P. Kennedy, who was disabled by a stroke, at the compound.

Asked to explain the Kennedy’s appeal, Monsignor Harrington said, “The country was changing. President Eisenhower was old. The Kennedys burst on the scene, young and full of life. I know that people have opinions that are quite negative but they were great people, fully committed to church and country.”

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.